CHAPTER IV.

Welsh Topography traced to the Eleventh Century.-Welsh Works of the Twelfth Century.-Earlier Style or Examples of Welsh unknown.Bardic Poems with Latin Sentences imply early Date or Ecclesiastical Editing.-Gildas wrote in Latin; quære, a Celt or Erse.-Early British Traditions oral.-Romances may be more authentic than early Welsh Publications.-These rest on collateral Evidence. Their Original unknown.-Modern Welsh a mixed Language.

Dr. Pritchard's Treatise to prove a Sanscrit Base of Ancient and Modern European Languages fails as to Welsh.-His Vocabulary does not comprise several important Welsh Words, these are Semitic.-The Construction "I am going," "I am eating," is Hebrew.—Hebrew Vocabularies giving the Originals of English or British Words of common Use.-A Topographical Vocabulary.-A Vocabulary of Class Words. Of the Topography of the Isle of Wight.-Technical Vocabulary.-General Vocabulary.

THE reader's indulgence and particular attention is desired and directed to the chapter. It may not be called the base of the "Suggestions," they have several data, and the concurrence of several lines of argument. But deductions from this chapter will be pursued to a considerable extent: it therefore requires consideration.

What is the title to an aboriginal language in the case of the Welsh as we hear it spoken in the Principality, in Brittany and elsewhere; for we are quite willing to include any cognate dialects in the category? Welsh topography may be traced back by title-deeds, terriers, and surveys, to the eleventh century; the twelfth gave us the modern Welsh editions of the Brut-y-Brennin, and others Bruts or Chronicles done respectively by Walter de Mappes, Archdeacon of Oxford, and by Geoffrey of Monmouth into Latin, and thence into Welsh. What was the language of the original remains untold by the editors and unknown to their

readers. The Triads come down to the reign of the Edwards. The Bardic poems with antique matter have generally the modern Welsh language and style of composition; the phrase "Rex rexedd" (in Herbert Brit. iv.) betrays for the case either the date when Latin was the vernacular tongue, or it simply gives a morsel of the Latin translation not done into Celtic. Latin words of ecclesiastical import, "sanctus," "spiritus," and the like, incorporated into the Welsh, show the hands which Welsh literature passed through. The Welsh numerals are Latin. But as to the early professors of Welsh literature and of letters bearing on early British subjects, we have in Gildas of the fifth century an early and remarkable instance his works are all in Latin. What language he spoke, and what was vernacular in his neighbourhood (Cumberland), we do not know. "Gildas" meaning priest or scholar is an Irish appellative, as A. Herbert observes there were a thousand Gildases. We gain little by having had preserved the name of Tysilio (of the seventh century) in connexion with the works translated by Geoffrey and Walter de Mappes. "Taliesin," assigned to the sixth century, and to the authorship of several poems, may have been an individual or may import "Old Songs," i.e., w、 w、 ¡. The majority of old British records are only to be accredited as genuine in proportion to collateral evidence confirmatory of their contents; they may all be authentic as Celtic works of a certain remote date. The close of the seventh century, shutting up the Welsh in Wales, put a period perhaps to Celtic mistranslation.

Let us recapitulate the points yet insisted on. The British literature, or literature in Britain, except as among the Saxon institutions, was a new thing. What was the old? What gave their subject to the Bruts, Triads, and Bardic poems? The oral tradition of unlettered Britons, whether Druid, Bard, or their hearers.

If there were any British records in sculptured or written records of an early date, and if the Ambrosian prophecies consulted by Cadwallader, or by Golyddan for him or (as we shall interpret it), made known to him by the Golyddan, be

such an instance, the case was exceptional. The Cherokee Indians began to commit their annals to writings, then invented, about a quarter of a century back; but their press will not take its works and subjects from times dating from that era. The British Archæology may have preserved in some sort annals of almost primeval eras of tradition. These traditions may be as authentic in the pages of Henry of Huntingdon, who was unacquainted with Welsh (Herbert xxvii.) as in their genuine Celtic or Welsh editions. Brittany appears to display more poverty than our island in Cymraic or British records; but, perhaps, we are the "magnas inter opes inops : "we have to confess the little worth of the early Welsh literature, or on examination such confession will be extorted. The Briton Romance may exceed in authenticity as to facts the Brut of Tysilio or the meagre history of Gildas, though these two authors are of early date. The Triads seem to have been secondary works, or glosses on the older traditions; they (Triads) come down to the era of Edward II. The poems called of Taliesin, and dated back to 570, will appear as glosses or mistranslations, abortions of an unformed literature of that early date.

Let us stop here in our review of the records by their titles and dates, to examine them presently on their merits. This we cannot do until we have assigned a language to the Bard and Druid and their archaic auditors.

The Welsh assert their origin as "Cambraic," to express literally the name as they give it to the ear. The correct spelling is Cymraeg, from Cymry or Cynmry, a name implying Cyn-mwr or Cyn-vawr, i. e. Chenimagni.

Their language as spoken and written is a mixed tongue with a copious infusion of Celtic in the vocabulary.

From the foregoing considerations we are driven from authority to facts; Welsh and Celtic scholars must give up their precedents and entertain the philological question on its merits.

With this view the work of Dr. Pritchard is very opportune. Its object is to prove a common Sanscrit base for the ancient and modern languages of Europe; as well of the

Continent as of the British isles, it includes the Celt and Erse of the Gael, the Irish, the Welsh, and the dialects of Cornwall and the Isle of Man. This is certainly a startling thesis: we mean the Hindu-European language, as far as it extends, is a remarkable phenomenon; perhaps not more so than that of a Tartar origin for the Escuerra (Borrow's Bible in Spain), perhaps paralleled by the fact of the Guanchos, aborigines of the Madeira Isles, being traced (by their mummies) to the Moors of Africa, the Mauritanians.-Humboldt. But that the Hindus should have influenced the language of the ancient Britons is a degree beyond the wonderful conveyed in the fact of Sanscrit in the Classic languages. The Erse, indeed, has a wandering reputation so indefinite, that it may have come from Miletus or Moultan, but the Cymri are scarcely to be forced over the border which modern research has found for them, Nineveh, whose inscriptions developed by Layard and Rawlinson, leave no doubt of the fact. (g)

Taking up Dr. Pritchard's faithful analysis, we trace him to a result diametrically opposed to his thesis as regards the Cymri, or Welsh.

In the Sanscrit, the root of the verb is the first person; in the Welsh the third, a trait of the Semitic.

The Sanscrit preterit has the reduplication as in Latin, in Welsh not; the latter has only two tenses and no moods: these are likewise Semitic principles.

The second person plural of verbs in Erse and Celt ends in t, as in Sanscrit; the Welsh in ch, the Semitic pronoun. The first person singular Celt and Erse ends in m or am, in Welsh in mi or vi: that vowel is the Semitic termination for the first person singular of the preterite.

Dr. Davies (cited p. 178) thought the root of the Welsh verb to be a noun. Now Dr. Lee (Hebrew Grammar) considers so likewise, and that the present tense has the form of an abstract noun, the preterite the concrete.

The verbal suffixes in Welsh as in Hebrew are truncate pronouns: Dr. Pritchard supposes this may be the case in Erse and Celt.

The Sanscrit noun has inflexions for cases, the Welsh and the Semitic none.

But the argument which appears to include the whole case of dialectic distinctions is conveyed in the British form of discourse" I am going," "I am eating." This case of Syntax does not belong to the Sanscrit (it is an Atticism, a point considered in Part II.) nor in any of the derived languages; it is not Roman, Saxon, nor Norman, and yet it is our insular mode of talk. It is common in the Hebrew. The above appear conclusive points in determining the ancient language of the Britons or of Britain within the lines of Cymric settlement. The accident of Celtic neighbours will account for the formation of the Welsh, or language of those who style themselves, and are the Cambraic or Cymric race. The following results occur on the vocabulary.

The Latin gave to the Welsh, as before stated, a great proportion of its ecclesiastical terms, its numerals, the words, father and mother; it does not give generally the names of animals. The names (Pritch. 70) for flame, sun, moon, are from the Semitic and shine. We have to insert the following cases of Welsh from the Sanscrit: they are given also in another page.

It is, of course, well known that both the Latin and Greek borrowed of the Semitic, so that we cannot always tell whether our language is debtor for an expression, or holds it by original right. "Secure" is a word of defined